Biologists
Amplify Dialogue on Genetically Engineered Crops With a
Symposium on Ecological Implications

By Cathy
Cockrell, Public Affairs
Posted March 8, 2000

More than 20 biological scientists from the United
States, Canada, Europe and Latin America converged at
Berkeley late last week to share their diverse scholarship
on the hotly debated issue of genetically modified food
crops.

Transgenic crops raise a wealth of issues -- among them
health and environmental risks, ethics, agronomic
effectiveness, intellectual property rights and corporate
control of food production. But the March 2-4 symposium
focused solely on the ecological implications of this
emerging technology -- an aspect that often gets short
shrift, say organizers of the symposium.

"The pro-biotechnology people say that sound science
should prevail in the production and regulation of
genetically modified food," said Miguel Altieri, associate
professor of environmental science, policy and management.
"But sound science has many dimensions, and at our workshop,
one such dimension -- ecological research -- raises
important concerns about the safety of this technology. It's
important to bring all sides of the scientific inquiry to
the table."

Altieri and the Oakland-based think tank Institute for
Food and Development Policy (Food First) hosted the
gathering of scientists who take a cautionary approach to
transgenic technology. They included entomologists, soil
specialists, ecologists and agronomic policy advisers, from
far-flung institutions, involved in research on the delicate
balance of natural processes potentially affected by genetic
modification of crops.

Biotechnology develops new crops through insertion of
foreign genetic material (for example inserting genes from
bacteria or fish into a food crop) -- a process that does
not occur in nature. "As a result," said Altieri, "we can
create new life forms that we have no evolutionary
experience with, and which could not be created by
conventional breeding."

Although genetically modified crops have been rejected by
much of the European public and banned by a number of
governments there, they have made considerable headway in
the United States. Seventy-five percent of the world's
genetically-modified crops are grown in this country,
including 80 million acres of corn whose genetic structure
has been artificially modified by adding genes from
bacteria, in the hope of making it more resistant to chronic
pests like the European corn borer.

"One third of the corn sold in the U.S. is Bt corn,"
University of Minnesota Professor David Andow told more than
150 students, faculty and researchers at a Thursday
afternoon seminar showcasing ecological issues raised at the
symposium. "It's the largest scale pest control experiment
in world history."

Fields planted with genetically modified, or Bt, corn
seem to produce higher yields for farmers during the corn
borer's most aggressive years, the entomologist said. But
he's worried about what may happen when the pest, through
mutation, develops resistance to Bt corn, much as insects
have done repeatedly in response to chemical pesticides.

"Entomologists say insects developing resistance is a
question of when, not if," Andow said. In the worst-case
scenario, the corn borer could develop resistance to Bt corn
within 4 to 6 years, he said, and in the best case, more
than 20.

Before resistant insect strains develop, said Andow,
"There's a huge list of things we need to think through, to
design well thought out resistance management systems." The
fact that millions of acres of U.S. cropland is already
planted with genetically modified corn makes the problem
more difficult, and urgent, than if research and sound
management policy had come first, he said.

Another scientist, Allison Snow of Ohio State University,
summarized research indicating that transgenes introduced to
make crops more resistant to insects, diseases, herbicides
or stress may be migrating to nearby invasive weeds through
gene flow and crop-weed hybridization. The fear is that the
weeds, too, may become more hardy, and their population
could explode.

The wild sunflower is one example of a troublesome weed.
"It's not something you want to become more common, even
though they're pretty to look at. We don't want to run out
of control methods for limiting weeds in farmers' fields,"
Snow said.

Oregon-based scientist Kelly Donegan, a researcher for
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, summarized
findings suggesting that genetically engineered crops cause
unanticipated changes in soils in which they are grown, as
transgenic plant products persist in the soil more than two
months.

At an international meeting in January, Altieri noted,
130 countries, including the United States, signed an
agreement endorsing the precautionary principle, which says
that even though the evidence is not yet conclusive, it's
better to err on the side of caution when introducing new
technology like genetic engineering. The agreement allows
countries to reject imports of genetically modified foods if
they have a scientific basis for uncertainty as to their
safety.

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer and state Senator Tom Hayden,
(D-Los Angeles), asked scientists attending last week's
symposium to endorse a proposed bill requiring labeling of
genetically modified foods. Most of the participants plann
to sign on, Altieri said, as they believe consumers have the
right to know what they are eating. A long list of
scientists have endorsed a rival proposal, sponsored by U.S.
Senator Christopher Bond, (R-Missouri), calling the labeling
unnecessary.

Symposium participants agreed "that there are better and
more sound agroecological alternatives to raise crops," said
Altieri. "Ecologists are being distracted from the key work
of developing agroecological alternatives by having to
monitor the mess that a rushed-to-market technology is
causing."